TA 297 - Honors

Fall 2013 Topic: Like Sisters Project

The Seminar
The Consciousness and the Arts Seminar will take an historical look at the evolution of consciousness and how it manifests in the ever changing forms of painting, music, theatre and literature. The books studied and the concepts learned will then form a common language and a pool of shared understanding that we will draw on in making artistic decisions while working on……like sisters. This course will also have an experiential component where we will study methods and learn techniques to develop attention and mindfulness. We will also look at how these form the foundation for the development of creativity.
The seminar will meet Fridays. The morning sessions will consist of lectures and discussion of that week’s assigned book, article, film, music or paintings. The class will be then invited to continue the discussion over lunch in a private room off the dining hall. The afternoon session will be reserved for practical work developing the …………….like sisters project. This will consist of rehearsal and/ or meeting in your production groups with your project mentor. The proposed groups:
1. Actors
2. Musician/composers
3. Design
4. Dancers/Improvisational actors
5. Research Group/dramaturgy film archival studies
6. Project documentarians
The Project
The …………like sisters project will be an original theatre piece based on the Three Sisters by Chekhov. The piece will consist of theatre, dance, music and film. A live collage examining the End of Empire in politics and consciousness. The context will be expanded beyond Chekhov and the end of Tsarist Russia to include fall of the Austro-Hungarian, British, and eventually American empires through the incorporating texts by Joseph Roth, Robert Musil and Richard Tarnas and Chalmers Johnson.

 

Anticipated Terms Offered: na